May 22, 2017
“Verde que te quiero verde”: Poems Written in Green
Living in Western Massachusetts instead of Baltimore this spring, I found myself rooting for the color green like its approach was a spectator sport. Baltimore’s springs arrive comparatively early and […]
April 24, 2017
Positive Negation: Saying No in Poetry
The old creative writing class imperative to “write what you know” may have its place, but lately I’ve been thinking of the power of poetry not to “know,” but to […]
February 6, 2017
On “Chen [No Middle Name] Chen”: Identity in Form
When I first encountered Chen Chen’s poem “Chen [No Middle Name] Chen,” another example of a poet engaged with the anagram as a formal construct (I have considered, in varying […]
December 22, 2016
The End of the Line: Terrance Hayes and Formal Innovation
If asked whose formal innovations have most influenced a current generation of younger poets, the first name out of my mouth would be Terrance Hayes. His “Golden Shovel” form is a […]
December 19, 2016
Unica Zürn: It lies in your hand
Enge, hier ist dein Land . . . es liegt in deiner Hand. (Narrow, here is your country . . . It lies in your hand.) –Unica Zürn (Berlin, 1954) […]
September 14, 2016
The Victor Dog
My husband recently inherited an old Victrola from his maternal grandparents. It’s perfectly maintained; lift the lid and wind the crank and drop the needle on one of the thick records […]
August 24, 2016
Poetry and Origin
Through the lens of Khaled Mattawa’s “History of My Face” and through the lens of Camille Rankine’s “Genealogy,” I’ve been thinking about poems as explorations of origins. When we think of “origin […]
July 29, 2016
“Still unknown objects that belong together”: Poetry and assemblage
I recently recorded a poetry craft talk for The Writing University Open Courses program, which will implement another session of its “How Writers Write: Talks On Craft and Commitment” series […]
July 1, 2016
First Person Plural: Part V (Genealogy)
Over the course of multiple posts, I’ve focused on poems that explore the first person plural – “we.” Most recently, I looked at Camille Rankine’s poem “Genealogy,” a poem that, though […]
June 29, 2016
First Person Plural: Part IV
I’m thinking again about Camille Rankine’s poetry and the first person plural—the more-than-singular self. In an earlier post, I spent time with Rankine’s poem “We,”a poem that invokes a collective […]